Secondary suite reform coming before Council.

It is time for Council to agree on secondary suite reform. Next week Council will consider a Notice of Motion that will see sweeping changes to the way applications are currently handled.

Here is a copy of the Notice of Motion:

This Motion has three key components:

Secondary suites would move to a discretionary use in R-1, R-C1 and R-1L districts;

A mandatory Secondary Suite Registry;

Reinstatement of fees for secondary suite applications.

As you can see some of my Council colleagues have formally signed on to this Notice of Motion. Other Members of Council have also contributed to crafting this Motion. It is my intent to have each of these items called separately and truly test the will of Council. This isn’t about agreeing on every aspect of this Motion, this is about finding something that a majority on Council can support. We can better solve problems by putting all of our ideas on the table and a making a decision. That is precisely why we are bringing this forward.

The Notice of Motion covers some of the overarching policy issues with our secondary suite process, but it does not get into specifics. Should the first resolution in the Notice of Motion be successful I will be presenting a Motion Arising that covers some specific issues with our secondary suites process. Here is a copy of the Motion Arising:

It is again my intention that these items be called separately. These items encapsulate a number of points that members of Council have raised over the last number of years. Now Council will actually have an opportunity to vote for what they want to see and vote against what they have concerns about. In the end it is my hope that we end up with a much better process than what we started with.

I believe that this approach is finding the best possible compromise for our secondary suite process. It is time that we took these conversations out from behind closed doors at City Hall and put them on the floor of Council. I’m looking forward to this item next week and I hope that Council can agree on a new process that better services Calgarians.